The Chef Video Idea

Today’s the anniversary of our first ever ‘property in community’ video, the format that we’ve adopted for almost all of our listings where we take the camera beyond the walls of the home and into the community.

I’ll never forget the results of that first video. I was hosting the open house, stuck out my hand to greet a man, and he said, ‘you’re David! I saw your video, I wasn’t shopping for a condo, but after watching I decided I want this one!’ He wrote an offer 23% over list price, putting an extra $75,000 in the pocket of my very, VERY happy seller.

How couldn’t we continue after a result like that? As a result, our listing videos have gained a lot of traction, even winning a Real Estate Video Influencer Award last year.

With all that said, and with imitation being the greatest form of flattery, a number of my competitors have hired the same video production company and are doing similar videos now. I couldn’t afford to rest on my laurels and thought, ‘what’s next?’

‘I know! Let’s put a chef in the kitchen!’

The video we produced for our new listing in the Terraces has already had over 2,000 views and generated a tonne of buzz. So, how’s this more than a gimmick? Why did we decide to give this a shot? Four reasons:

– Highlighting The Unique Features: If there are unique features, as there are in this kitchen, like the Bosch gas rangetop with the stock pot burner in the middle, then who better to highlight that than a professional chef?

– Cross Promotion: We’ve shared the video on all our platforms, and we’re having to spend more and more to get the reach we used to get, but having new sources of shares really helps us with the social media algorithms. When facebook sees non-real estate related pages sharing our content, they think it’s more interesting and we end up on more potential buyers timelines.

– Keeping Things Interesting: We’re in an entertainment overload era. If it’s not stimulating and intriguing, viewers skip. I remember getting a call from a fellow realtor a year or so ago saying, ‘I just spoke to my social media team in Toronto, they said most people click off videos within 10 seconds, but people watch David Smith’s through to the end!’ To hold attention, we need to keep things interesting!

– Advocating For Others: This is who we are, and this is what we do. After speaking regularly about using our businesses to advocate for others, why wouldn’t we use our platform to support our friends and another local business, in this case, Leef & Stem? We love them, and we love what they’re doing. This was our chance to share the limelight with them and celebrate them for their great work.

I think that’s plenty of reasons to have given this a shot! It’s not going to work for every listing, and we’ll continue with the ‘property in community’ style of video for the vast majority, but for some listings we’re going to continue to try outside of the box ideas to generate as much attention to the home as we can!

If you know someone looking to sell their home, make sure to reach out, maybe we have an interesting idea for them too! And thanks again for all the shares!